Show HN: Remoty – Work like you're in the same office | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Remoty – Work like you're in the same office

remoty.dev

15 pointsmahad75935 comments

Please no, let's not use a bot to tell others that we're taking a 'power nap'.

"TIME TRACKING & SCRUM MADE SIMPLER AND FUN"

How on Earth could someone write this down? Making time tracking FUN? Making it frictionless, easy, simple -- okay. Fun?

(Sorry for the negativity, I've been working and leading engineers remotely for many years, and the big challenge and holy grail of remote work is finding the best way for providing context, not tracking time.

providing context: lead by providing meaningful goals and context so that people can independently move towards them in an environment where communication is expensive and noise is harmful.

Hey! Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts! Really appreciate it!

So, well we wrote because a developer in my company with whom we piloted this product said "It's like playing a game, it's fun". So it just sort of started from there and we thought might sound more catchy so we went forward with it. Nonetheless point well taken!

Please excuse my ignorance but can you elaborate a bit more on "so that people can independently move towards them in an environment where communication is expensive and noise is harmful."

I'm not really sure what problem this is solving. The value prop seems to be based around more closely emulating the in-office experience, but in what office did people need to track time spent at their desk, and announce to everyone when they were going to the bathroom or to lunch? I would hate to work in that office.

That feature seems to be aimed at paranoid managers, not "teams".

Also, the "asynchronous stand-up" feature seems at-odds with the time-tracking. A work culture that allows for asynchronous stand-up should also be one that doesn't care when someone is at their desk and when they are not.

Hey so maybe we are not very good at umm explaining what our product does, I guess. Our vision behind emulating the in-office experience revolves around the idea that when you're working in an office, you can "see" who's in and who's not. Plus for example your colleague got off his chair and went out for of the room you'd notice that for sure (if you're friends you may even know the reason behind it as well). After covid-19 lockdowns, people started to work remote. Now that feeling of knowing what your colleagues are unto isn't anymore. If pre-lockdown you had to go and ask a colleague some help, you'd know if he's available or not but when you go remote you're not sure if he is available at that instant or not.

Plus, when a lot of teams faced a sudden transition to remote, they were only touch with the people who they were dependent on. As in your team lead, or one or two team mates. So, that feeling of being connected to other coworkers starts to fade away.

Tbh, this is the first time I have heard so many people `pissed` (can't think of a right word) at remoty. I literally have users emailing me who JUST used our product for 8 days saying that their team has already started to feel closer. I can share that screenshot as well. We never designed this workflow for paranoid managers, else it'd have some crazy features like selfie & geo-located attendance etc.

And I get what you're saying about standups. But again, we designed it in a way that it allows people working in different timezones take control of their schedules.

You can do that with a plain old calendar without the tracking

So you're saying that if I have to go offline for a while during my work time I should put in my calendar?

Absolutely. See https://reclaim.ai/daily-habits/ for an example of how this is executed elegantly.

reclaim ai looks like a really great tool! I just have skimmed through the landing page, but from what I understand is you still have to switch context even after using a slack integration. Teams are split in sooo many tools these days, that switching context is sometimes that big of a overhead that people may choose to avoid it. Plus most importantly, never claimed that using remoty is the ONLY way you can communicate your schedule on the fly.

Points are taken. I think you have to nail down who your audience is: colleagues or managers. How you approach the problem is going to be different for each audience, based on the expectations and workflows of those audiences. Best of luck.

Thank you so much for this amazing feedback! Will do!

Not really the place ask for unbiased feedback. Most devs here want less of this sort of thing. Maybe post on reddit startups instead.

Thank you so much! Can you please recommend some subreddits that I could get some feedback from?

Yeah this is a product for managers who miss the warm fuzzies of seeing butts in seats.

lol! you're saying that ONLY your manager is concerned whether you're in your seat or not?

What everyone is saying that NOBODY should care whether we are in our seat or not. That is not relevant to remote work, nor to autonomous team members. Remote teams do care about availability, but that little green dot next to our name in Slack completely suffices.

This is a product where some people will want it even if they don’t “need” it and I think it might do well on that basis. It’s for time tracking cultures and I bet a lot of development is done this way especially cheap shops selling basic sites to clients. So probably there is a demand for this kind of tool. But not for FAANGs etc.

I would quit any job which made me do this while working remotely. I've been a very successful full-time remote engineer for over a decade and this is incompatible with my workflow and quality of life considerations.

Hey! Thanks for taking a look at remoty! Can you please share what's the worst thing about this tool? What makes it so incompatible?

If you don't know what's so bad about it, you shouldn't be developing software. If you know what is so objectionable about it, but are acting unawares, you most definitely should stay the fuck away from software development. Everyone has a duty to take responsibility for what they create.

This is the most stupidest & absurd thing I've ever heard.

Also calm down, I have not created killer AI robots that will take over humanity

The entire premise of the tool. There are developers who work full-time remote specifically to escape micro-managing aspects such as knowing exactly when you're sitting in your chair. Presumably you've built this for the other set of remote developers who are only working remotely because they have to, but really they want an office. This tool caters to the latter at the expense of the former.

EXACTLYYYYY! What everyone seems to forget that there can be more than one type of remote work.

The title of this this post is to work like you're in the same office. Whole tool is focusing towards people who would WANT to have that type of remote experience, they need to know about each other's schedule etc.

If there's something constructive to take from the somewhat brutal set of responses you've received, I'd say it's to strategically consider how to make this software friendly to the HN type of remote worker (those who value independence and don't wish to simulate an office environment).

I'm not sure exactly what that would look like, but if that type of remote worker feels too threatened by the software, the companies will receive lots of push back and you're less likely to retain them as a customer.

This just looks like a way for employers to track employees with no benefit to said employees. No one needs to know when I’m on a break at home / taking a shit.

Well that's one way to look at it, maybe a lot of people who share your view as well but there most certainly are people who want to take shit in peace XD. They don't want those annoying calls from their team members when they are busy. We see it as giving back control the employee about his schedule. He tells everyone that he's not available to work rn (adding comment is optional so he can skip on the specifics of the break)

I'm not against status updates, it's the tracking and clocking in and out like a 1920's factory worker inside my own home that I find objectionable. Even in an office proper, this kind of tracking is a fundamental breach of trust and causes a serious imbalance of power.

I also find framing this kind of thing as somehow benefiting an employee to be so duplicitous I think it is malicious.

I feel like "tracking" has a very bad connotation here at hn. As an associate product manager working remotely I would want to know if a certain software engineer has checked in for the day so that I can ask him for an update. I personally would not want to disturb him when he's off the clock. Again, its not about not trusting employees but creating a sense of transparency and closeness in a team

Hey Show HN!

We’d love some feedback on remoty which helps remote teams reach their full potential with powerful time-tracking and progress update workflow in Slack.

=> What does it do?

1.Boosts your team coordination using intuitive time tracking commands.

2.Helps you save hours in meetings by organizing async daily stand-up meetings.

3.Helps you track billable hours, generate scrum logs and export CSV timesheets of your team.

=> Why’d we built it?

We devised a workflow in our company to create an essence of working in the same office by increasing visibility over availability and statuses of team members. This workflow had 2 basic steps

1. Announce your check-in/check-out/breaks followed by two or three words to give context in a dedicated channel.

2. Turn in your standup notes (even if we already had a team standup call) while checking in or out so as to maintain records of standup notes.

We saw a real change in our team’s coordination and productivity over the period of next few weeks. We then started to think on the lines of automation so that the data that was being collected could be put to good use as well. This led to us to build remoty!

As of now we have approximately 100 users who actively use our product. All of them are following the process that we follow in our company. So far we haven't been able to pin point the EXACT user persona of remoty. We have pure technical teams, marketing/insurance teams and even research labs of universities paying for the product.

Some of our users/potential users that I talked to are requesting for a shift/leave management feature while others are looking for a more comprehensive in-slack task management solution. Would really appreciate feedback from you all on how we can improve & grow remoty!

Please headout to [https://remoty.dev] to give remoty a shot!

Jesus Christ this is terrible.

absolute crap. should not be used by any company. yall want to make it harder to work remotely... smh

I am assuming you have some problem with creating intra team transparency?

The same way many people have some problem with neighbourhood transparency by using curtains on their windows?

Well the real issue for me is not the tool but the implied culture. I’ve worked at places that track time in Jira and for the first 3 months it’s fine, then manager dive into reports and i get pulled into a room for being too slow. Now I have to take shortcuts and think about maintainability less and write shite code. Then I leave. Employee churn is not great for teams. Churning thoughtful developers and keeping the “fast” ones is definitely bad for velocity but you’ll never notice. I’d say let this tool be a warning to all devs: what will you do to skill up so you don’t need to work for companies that track your time on the shitter.

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